Prosodic boundary in the speech of children with autism

Abstract

Expressive prosody is thought to be disordered in autism, and this study sets out to evaluate one aspect (prosodic boundary) to investigate a) how nave judges rate utterances for atypicality; b) whether pitch and duration measurements in those utterances differ from those of typicallydeveloping children; and c) whether children with autism can use prosodic boundary in speech for linguistic distinctions. Samples were drawn from children aged between 5 and 13 years; 31 with language-delayed high-functioning autism (LDHFA), 40 with Asperger's syndrome (AS) and 119 with typical development (TD). Results showed that nave judges perceived children with LD-HFA as sounding more atypical than those with AS, who in turn were marginally more atypical than those with TD. Measurements suggested those with LDHFA had wider pitch-span than those with TD. The groups did not differ on linguistic functionality, and it is possible that factors other than prosody contributed to the perception of atypicality.